Backlinks are valuable assets for a business’s reputation and credibility. At the same time, they are also valuable assets for search engine optimization, helping you get ranked better and thus, attract more traffic and conversions. However, not every link is valued equally.
Black hat link-building tactics, such as private blog networks (PBN), poor-quality guest posts, purchasing low-quality mentions, cloaking, and redirects, are considered a serious violation of Google’s search engine guidelines. They can result in penalties, throwing off your past SEO efforts.
For this reason, the only right way to gain mentions and grow your website is to engage in white hat link-building. And we are here to tell you about the best strategies that work now.
Focus on Producing Valuable Content
While there are many types of link-building strategies in which you reach out to potential donors and pitch your content, placing focus on creating linkable content is one of the most ethical tactics. The truth is that many content creators will gladly mention you on their sites without a request, just to give their readers more worthy content. In this case, your copy will be working on you all the time. However, it’s only possible if your articles are truly share-worthy.
So, what does this mean? In a nutshell, link-worthy content is of premium quality, original, and packed with valuable data. Creating such pieces requires meticulous research, fact-checking, and thinking outside the box to offer a new perspective or knowledge on a popular theme. Make these principles the core of your content creation strategy and focus on delivering valuable insights that align with the interests and needs of your target audience. Consider creating different kinds of content, including blog articles, case studies, reports, infographics, videos, and others. Fill your site with top-notch information, and links will follow.
And don’t forget to optimize your copy well. This will help you ensure that other creators also find it.
Leverage Digital PR and Active Outreach
Digital PR is the art of creating coverage for your brand in various online media. It works either by being the story or the source for journalists, and it’s one of the most powerful proactive link-building tactics. There are multiple ways to leverage digital PR:
- HARO method—HARO, or help a reporter out, is a strategy that implies becoming the expert source for journalists. You can leverage your industry expertise to give them valuable comments or insights on their topic, and they will mention you in return.
- News creation—Turn changes in your company into news stories. For example, create news about mergers, new hires, or product/service launches and spread them within the media to get credit.
- Event hosting—Hosting a big event for your customers, partners, or other industry players is also a way to get coverage. Journalists will gladly report on your event if it’s relevant and brings value. Moreover, this method of PR will establish you as a leader in your niche, which is great for your reputation.
Get Featured in Resource Pages
Some websites feature a curated list of external sources, typically known as resource pages. They create such lists to provide additional value to their own content and give their audiences more sources of information to explore a given topic from different angles.
You can also use this opportunity in your link-building strategy. To do this, you need to find sites with resource pages relevant to your business and pitch your site as one of the sources. To make it work, personalize your outreach to the person who manages the page. Be clear on what you are asking for. And, most importantly, indicate the value of your site by showing how it will make their page better.
Do Guest Posting Right
Guest posting is probably one of the most well-known and used link-building strategies. And it really works. But if you do it the right way.
To bring maximum output, guest posting should be focused, thoughtful, and result-driven. This means that less but of better quality is usually better than more but with no value. Here are some baseline tips to make it work for you:
- Have a defined goal to guide your choice of opportunities.
- Don’t go with mediocre or poor-quality sites. Instead, select them meticulously based on the reputation, focus of content, audience, engagement, and activity across different mediums.
- Prepare your posts with attention and care. Reputable sites won’t want to publish generic or superficial content. However, if you can bring an authentic vision and valuable insights, they will be more likely to approve your pitch.
- Pitch to the right person and make it personalized. As always, speak the language of benefit, such as what a website will win from featuring an article from you.
Track Broken Backlinks and Offer a Replacement
The next tactic is one of the pillars of white hat link-building. In a nutshell, broken link-building implies monitoring broken links on reputable sites that align with your business and target audience, and then offering webmasters to replace them with a working link to your own piece of content.
Why does this tactic work? First of all, no website wants to host broken links. When their audience reads an article, clicks to follow to another site, and sees an error, this greatly hinders user experience and the host’s credibility. In the long run, it can potentially harm search engine rankings. And secondly, when you detect such mentions on your own and reach out with an easy solution, webmasters are more likely to accept your offer, especially if your copy is good.
So, how do you do this? All you need is to leverage the best free backlink checker tools and use them to analyze profiles of your target donors. Once you detect broken links, report them and instantly offer a replacement, emphasizing the value you provide.
Gain Mentions From Partners and Communities
The next recommendation is a rather low-effort tactic. Still, it doesn’t mean that you can’t make it a part of your link-building strategy.
There must be plenty of people in your community. These can include friends, family, colleagues, clients, investors, and business partners. Some of them may also run their own websites and blogs. Then why not try to use it for your benefit?
It won’t cost you much to ask people you know to mention you on their resources. Some of them might gladly do it for you. And of course, you want to be featured only on relevant sites, so some of the resources of your acquaintances may not work. But it’s worth asking in order not to lose the opportunities that are within your reach.
That’s not the only “asking around” approach that you can try. Additionally, you can seek more opportunities in niche communities. And you can also create strategic partnerships with other brands, bloggers, and influencers to exchange backlinks, collaborate on content creation, and support each other’s growth.
Reclaim Lost Mentions
The last tip on our list with the best link-building techniques in SEO is to always keep an eye on your lost mentions. A lost mention is one that you used to have before, but lost for a certain reason. This can happen if:
- The mention was removed by the author.
- The destination page no longer exists.
- The destination page has a redirect.
- It’s not indexed in Google anymore.
Regardless of the reason, losing a backlink means just one thing—you’ve captured this opportunity before, but now it’s lost. Luckily, you can regain it.
To do this, use your monitoring software to detect lost opportunities. Then, evaluate every piece of content that fell into this category and update or repurpose it for added value. Finally, reach out to the donor to claim it back and tell them how you have improved (aka how their website will benefit from it even more now).
Aim for Quality and You’ll Win
Now you have a list of effective link-building strategies that have been tested over time and proven to bring results. In the end, there is only one thing worth adding – gaining quality mentions that actually improve your reputation and rankings is all about giving quality and value on your own. No matter what you do, quality wins—always.
So, don’t aim for quantity. Instead, focus on creating valuable content and meaningful, lasting relationships with your partners. And don’t hesitate to diversify the link-building strategies you use for maximum impact. If you do this, you will be doomed to achieve the goals you are aiming for!